1995 How Impulsive Can You Be?.................................

The scene: the living room of the house in Shubenacadie.
The time: about nine a.m., early April I think.
I was sitting in my recliner, holding a mug of tea, Glennys came down the passage from her bedroom. Out of the blue I asked, "Fancy moving to England?" Just like that.
Quick as a flash came back the answer, "OK."

So began, perhaps, the strangest year of my life. One factor had perhaps prompted me. Glennys' aunt Ann had died shortly before. As luck would have it I was in casual touch auntie Ann's son (Glennys' nephew) Paul.
Rocky and Ann's bungalow in Bourton-on-the-Water stood empty. No memory now of how the seed germinated but our oft-thought-about but never-seriously-acted-upon urge to "go home" seems to have stirred again. Paul must have offered and some part of us must have heard the call too loud.

The urge to "un-emmigrate" had been with us perhaps from 'soon' after we'd arrived in Montreal. Perhaps the urge to "go home" dwells forever in the breast of the immigrant. The spark would flash to flame and grow bright for a while then inertia and common sense would push it back down again, but it never quite burnt out.

But in 1995 with our sons gone, me retired and the mortgage paid - what was to keep us from wandering?

No doubt friends and relatives were aghast and thought us mad. Mad in a way we were. Our sons and grandchildren were going to be left behind. A brand new car, a house full of stuff from nearly thirty years of Canadian living, the house itself, friends, interests. From where did we gather enough nerve (or enough stupidity)?

Regardless of all common sense to the contrary we bagan a mad whirl of "give, sell or toss."

The house? That should have been the difficult part but, oddly it sold and we got close to our asking price. The car? A brand new, green Toyota Tercel went easily enough. "Everything else?" We gave to friends, sold in yard sales, passed on the Martin, took to the dump - it must have been never ending.

The chaotic business of shedding our "stuff" is now a dim and confused memory. Somewhere I began to feel a wonderful freedom. There may be a streak of minimalist in me but the freedom was oddly refreshing.

What did we keep? My railway! A sizeable selection of our books (a lot of railways and aviation books included of course). Photo albums and that modest pile of irreplacable stuff that is "your past". It all went into a cruelly small heap of cardboard boxes, to follow by sea.

No doubt there were last visits to friends who wished us well and thought us deranged. A sweet and strange farewell gathering at the Enfield archery club. Martin did the final honours, driving us all to supper and thence I think to the airport. Strange how time dims and muddles the memories. Emotions must have run very high and very low that day.

I remember the 'climb-out' fom Halifax airport in a 767. The setting sun. Improbable though it might seem I was able to pick out the gleam of that sun on the Shubenacadie river. The river and the place had figured much in our lives. Now, we were going home and .... we were leaving home too.

What thoughts must have gone through our heads that evening in June(?) of 1995. What had we done!!! What lay ahead? The mix of joy and sadness must have been awful.

What lay ahead indeed? ........ Turned out every bit as crazy as what we'd just done.